FOOD:Crossogue Preserves has taken an exotic turn with the launch of a series of new products - hot red pepper jelly, banana chutney, and banana and rum jam - inspired by company founder Veronica Molloy's trip to Tanzania last September with the Playing for Life Charity.
Molloy's mission was to share her preserve-making skills with a class of 14 Tanzanian women, using fruit and vegetables grown locally. As well as the three recipes which have gone into production in Ireland, Molloy and her group made sweet potato jam, mango and passion fruit jam, melon and lime jam, and lots of exotic fruit chutneys.
"We cooked all of these under canvas, on single gas rings, in huge homemade saucepans with wonderful handmade spoons a foot long, in the middle of a banana plantation," Molloy explains. "Amazing progress was made and the preserves were given the brand name Pallotti Preserves, with their own label designed by one of the art designers on the trip."
Molloy's hot red pepper jelly (recipe follows), is simple to make. If you don't have a jelly bag, use a muslin square tied to the legs of an upturned stool, or, as they had to do in Tanzania, "you could use a clean pillow case boiled in a saucepan for five minutes," Molloy says.
"The reason we used so many chillies is because they were so numerous in Tanzania. But this jelly gives everything a lift. It is excellent with hard-boiled eggs, and I make a delicious canape by cutting a hard-boiled egg lengthways, scooping out the yolk and mixing it with a teaspoon of jelly and returning it to the white shell. It is delicious with cold chicken, too."
You can buy nicely presented six-packs of any of the Crossogue products online at www.crossoguepreserves.com, and they're also on sale in Avoca, Butler's Pantry, and the Kilkenny Group outlets, as well as lots of independents.
Crossogue Preserves hot red pepper jelly
1½ kg red chillies
Sugar (see method for exact amount)
6 red peppers
2 green peppers
3 pints of white vinegar
4 lemons
2 pints of water
Chop up the chillies, peppers and lemons very finely and put them into a saucepan. Add the vinegar and water. Cook until they are very soft. Fill a jelly bag with the mixture and hang it over a bowl overnight. To every pint of the resulting juice add half a kilo of sugar. Cook this for 30 minutes approximately, until it begins to set in the saucepan. Decant the jelly into sterilised jars. If desired, a blanched red chilli can be inserted in each one.